Vacation!

That's right, I just got back to blogging, and I'm already off on vacation again. This time it is a real vacation, not an "I'm too caught up in researching for exams to make cards" vacation. My mother is coming to visit Sunday and staying for 2 1/2 weeks! I am very excited. We have a train trip planned, and sight-seeing around the city. Plus I will be doing no researching for exams until she leaves, so I get 3 weeks off (I started yesterday! hehe)! But with my mother coming to visit I had to put away my craft supplies so there will be no new cards until she is gone and I can spread out my stash again.

Hope everyone has a wonderful time! Happy Fall, happy early Thanksgiving for those other Canadians out there, and see you when I'm back!

Heart to Heart Blog Candy

Just a note to let people know that Carolyn King, that amazing woman so many of us have come to know as Cammie, has posted info for the Heart to Heart Blog Candy. This is an amazing thing that has completely snowballed through the generosity of individuals and companies. My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and seeing the change in her was heartbreaking. So getmaking a card and send a thank you to a caregiver looking after a person with Alzheimers. If you do not know any, Cammie has included the address for a home she knows well. It is a tough thing, so let's all show join Cammie in her amazing campaign to support Alzheimer's research (by purchasing her stamp set from Gina K. Designs) and/or participating in the blog candy. And it is amazing! $1000 worth of candy plus cards from tons of amazing people! Who wouldn't want to be the lucky winner?

Hope everyone has had a great weekend. Now go make a card!

More Notepad Craziness

I just couldn't resist doing another notepad. Afterall, I had 4 more of them just sitting there! This one is for my grandma, the woman who shared her love of owls with me. I pulled out my Sassafras Lass Olivia and Oliver owl sets and went to work. This time I only stamped at the bottom of the page to keep the notepad together and for my own sanity! This was one of those times I hadn't quite planned out what I was going to do. I stamped the little purple owl on every page first. Then I looked at it and realized that a branch would be such a good idea. Silly me!

The branch is from Oliver & Pals and just the edge of it made it onto the pages. The green is very pale, but my grandma likes pastel colours and I didn't want to overpower the owls. I realized that the little purple owl looked lonely so I had to add a little blue one! Then I couldn't resist a silly sentiment. The "hoo!" is from Olivia & Friends, and the "yoo" are Martha Stewart letters. Sadly my "pink" ink looks a little purple. Definitely going to have to get a nice pink DewDrop sometime (I have one, but it is super pale), perhaps with the free $20 I have at Scrapbook Centrale for filling my loyalty card.

Here is a detail shot of the stamped image. I thought pale images would be nice for the notepaper so my Grandma could write over them if necessary and they would not overpower her note, because that is the important part!


A little proof that I did, indeed, stamp every page of this 50 page notepad! Much easier this time. I could have done it all at once if I'd been thinking right in the beginning, but oh well. I did it one colour at a time. Turned out cute in the end!

Hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy the lovely Fall weather!

Recipe:
Stamps: Olivia & Friends and Oliver & Pals by Sassafras Lass, Martha Stewart Arial letter stamps
Ink: VersaMagic Spring Pansy, Aloe Vera, and Sea Breeze (mixed with another blue), ColorBox chalk ink in orchid pastel and blue lagoon.
Other: 50-page notepad from Walmart, patience

Birthday fishes and some craziness

Well, as promised, I got a bit more work done crafting this weekend! Finally getting back in the groove a bit, just in time to have to put away my craft supplies a little bit. Oops!

During my request that my friends give me some work, one friend asked for a card for her dad's 50th birthday. I thought about it, and I pulled out a bunch of paper to see what I could find. When I pulled out some Creative Imaginations fish paper I knew what I was going to do. Everyone kept doing such cute birthday fishes cards that I had to do one. Seeing the picture I can see it doesn't quite do justice. I cut the fish out of the original paper to pop them up on dimensionals. I took some plain cardstock and stamped some white wave-like designs on it in white and used detail clear EP to give them a little more something. Then some water dots. The window actually has acetate in it and the green layer is popped up on higher dimensionals. A little bling, and voila!

Recipe:
Stamps: border stamp by Fiskars
Ink: white by ColorBox
Papers: fish by Creative Imaginations, green Bazzil cardstock, blue cardstock, acetate
Accessories: green and blue ribbon from Michael's, white Sakura pen, orange bling by me & my big ideas, Rain dots by Cloud 9 designs, dimensionals, detail clear EP

My other finished project is one that made me a bit crazy. I had gotten the idea to decorate a notepad in a roundabout way when a male friend complained about how hard it is to find masculine notepaper. I thought of the idea of just buying a plain pad and decorating it, although not necessarily for him. So when I offered my friends some creative projects one other one requested a pad, especially one she could stick to her fridge. I bought a stack of 5 plain notepads from Walmart, 50 pages each, for about $4. Not a bad deal, right? So I thought about my friend and the colours she likes: browns and earthtones. So I started out thinking I wanted to put a design at the top of each page. That's right, EACH PAGE! I grabbed some studio g stamps, one "just a note" which I inked up in brilliance coffee bean, and a little flower and flourish stamp. The flower and flourish stamp was my silliest idea: I decided to ink the middle flower in one colour, the outside two in another, and the flourishes on the outside in yet another colour! Well, that was great for the first couple pages. By page 20 I was really starting to think I was nuts! I did it though. Unfortunately I had to press each page up flat to stamp the next page, so the pad started to fall apart a little with the glue not holding the pages together. After I finished stamping the top I looked at the pages again and realized they weren't done. So I grabbed my brilliance coffee bean again and stamped 6 flowers on each page. Yup, that sure was alot of stamping. To hold the pad together I decided to put some clips on each corner at the top. Easily removable if the pad is holding and they want to pull sheets off, or just rip them off and not worry about the pages looking pretty. I just have to find magnets strong enough to hold the page to the fridge. Worth it in the end I hope.

Recipe:
Paper: plain pad from Walmart, 50 pages.
Stamps: "just a note," flower and flower flourish by Studio G
Ink: brilliance coffee bean DewDrop, cocoa, brown and merlot by Colorbox
Accessories: peach clips from Michael's, magnets (eventually)

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and happy crafting!

New cards finally!

Well, I finally have some new things to show again! I have been feeling creative but finding myself without ideas of what to make. I appealed to my friends for help and they were happy to oblige! One friend requested some notecards. As her favourite colours are pink and orange I wanted to make ones that would show that. Sadly I was sort of lacking in orange paper that would go well with the pink, so I decided to tone it down just a little and use orange ink to stamp the flower on yellow paper. I like how it turned out. Embossing powder helped to bring out all the good stuff, along with some dewdrops. All 10 cards are the same, with relatively plain envelopes that will work well for mailing.

Recipe:
Stamps: "just a note" by Studio G, flower by EK Success
Inks: orange and white by ColorBox
Paper: Pink dots by K & Company, green paper from a Walmart pack, yellow and white cardstock
Accessories: Fire dew drops, white and detail clear embossing powder, corner rounder, oval nestabilities.


My other card for today is a birthday card for a 15 year old girl who loves "spink." Sparkly pink, I was informed, is her favourite colour. So here it is. It took a bit of doing but I rather like how it turned out in the end. I started with a pale pink base card. The bottom of the front was scalloped with a corner rounder punch, then holes punched with a Crop-a-dile. I lined around the holes with my Sakura stardust pen. Beneath the base on the inside I put a strip of dark pink K & Co glitter paper that would make it all stand out. I put a matching piece along the top on the front, scalloped to mimic the bottom. I took a piece of darker pink cardstock and embossed it using a Happy Birthday CB folder. I grabbed an inbetween shade of cardstock for the top. Looking at it now I almost wish I'd stuck with the pale pink again, but oh well. It still looks good. The flower is from a glue rub-on and decorations set using the pink glitter. I topped it with a 1 and 5 from some CB letters which were decorated a bit more with my glitter pen. This was popped up on dimensionals. The oval I originally wrote on with a Quickie Glue pen and tried to get the glitter to stick to it, but the glitter just does not seem to stick well at all. I went over it with a Sakura glaze pen and it shows up much better now. This was also popped up on dimensionals. All in all, looks like a decidedly girly card!

Recipe:
Paper: K&Co pink with glitter (glued the name to the card so I can't look it up!, 3 shades of pink cardstock
Accessories: corner rounder punch, crop-o-dile, Sakura stardust pen, glue rubons and pink glitter, dimensionals, Happy Birthday CB embossing folder, Sakura glaze pen in pink, dimensionals.

I have another project that I have almost finished: a notepad. I bought some cheap ones from Walmart and offered to decorate them for friends. One friend took me up on it and asked for one with magnets to stick to her fridge. I am now in the process of hunting out magnets to stick on the back that will hold it up! The magnets I have just aren't quite up to the job. But let me tell you, stamping 50 sheets of paper with a design has taught me to KISS (keep it simple, silly)! The next one I do for my grandma will be much less involved. But I like how it turned out.

Lovely weather lately, so hopefully everyone has been able to enjoy some of it! Have a great rest of the weekend!

And back in the fall!

Well, I have been missing in action for pretty much the entire summer. Caught up in school and various other things, but life has been going well. I am eagerly anticipating my mother's visit at the end of September. It is so odd to think that I have been living in my current apartment for 3 years and my mother has never seen it other than in pictures! The only downside to her visit is that it is in lieu of my taking a trip back home this fall. I'm definitely missing all my friends back home! Thus, I thought I should make a card!

It is based on an old SFYTT by Jen Del Muro that I had loved when I saw it but hadn't gotten around to trying out until now. It also gave me a chance to play with a bunch of things I've gotten over the summer. I just picked up some cheap iridescent watercolour paints. I couldn't afford to kit myself out with Twinkling H2O's, so when I saw a palette of simlar paints for much less in DeSerres I was very excited! I used them on the teddy bear, the flowers on the Bella's pj's, and her slippers. I just love the image too! Definitely love my Bellas!

Hope everyone has a great first week of September. I am feeling a bit shocked that for the first time in 22 years September does not mean the start of new classes! I am still working on my comprehensive exams. One down! I write the next at the end of September.

Recipe:
Stamps: Jammiebella
Ink: Brilliance Coffee Bean
Papers: coral Bazzil textured cardstock, dark brown Bazzil textured cardstock, Dream Street "Art Nouveau - Muse," white cardstock
Extras: watercolour pencil crayons, iridescent watercolour paints, Dahlia Box Blends flowers by Petaloo, brushed pewter brads, brown pen